Early warning from eccentric compact binaries: Template initialization and subdominant mode effects
Phys. Rev. D 113, 123060 – Published 23 June, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/j77m-dyym
Abstract
Early warning of gravitational waves (GWs) is essential for multimessenger observations of binary neutron star and black hole-neutron star merger events. In this study, we investigate early warning prospects from eccentric compact binaries, whose mergers are expected to comprise a significant fraction of detected GW events in the future. Eccentric binaries exhibit oscillatory frequency evolution, causing GW frequencies to recur multiple times through their coalescence. Consequently, generating eccentric waveform templates for early warning requires specification of initial conditions. While the standard approach involves initiating waveform generation when the orbit-averaged frequency enters the detector band, we compare this with an alternative approach that uses the periastron frequency as the starting point. Our analysis shows that initializing at the periastron frequency yields an improved signal-to-noise ratio and sky localization. Additionally, including subdominant modes alongside the dominant (2, 2) mode leads to further improvements in sky localization. We explore the parameter space of primary mass , spin , and eccentricity across three detector configurations: O5, Voyager, and 3G. We find that in the O5 configuration, including eccentricity and subdominant modes, the sky localization area can be reduced by 2%–80% at 1000 square degrees (from to ), offering up to 41 seconds of additional early warning time. For neutron star-black hole (NSBH) systems, subdominant modes alone contribute up to 70% reduction. For the Voyager configuration, the sky area reduction due to eccentricity spans 2%–85%, with eccentricity increasing from 0.1 to 0.4, yielding up to 1 minute of extra early warning time at 1000 sq. deg. sky area. Subdominant modes contribute up to 94% reduction for NSBH systems, though their impact is nearly zero for binary neutron star systems. In the 3G detector scenario, the sky area reduction due to eccentricity reaches 80% (from to ) at 100 square degrees, and subdominant modes enhance the reduction up to 98% for NSBH systems.